


Shades of Memory

by Delphi



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Childhood Sexual Abuse, Drama, M/M, Revenge, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-01-04
Updated: 2004-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-04 11:52:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Albus is haunted by the ghost of a boy he once knew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shades of Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2004 run of the ADXSS Buggering Bee. Challenge: _Albus does something without Severus's knowledge._

** 1.**

We meet on a Sunday, a warm and rainy day in June when the sky is a pale grey and the walls of your family's townhouse smell of rot in the damp. I have just finished my first year as Headmaster of Hogwarts, and you are very nearly four years old. You say it just so (very nearly four) and render me enchanted. I find you a singularly lovely child, dark-eyed and olive like Titania's Indian boy, and far too young to fathom the beauty of your own butterfly eyelashes and little rosebud mouth. Your mother has dressed you as heir for the occasion of my visit, in the sombre greys that your father favours and soft-soled boots in miniature, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.

You are a princeling, young Severus (and I—dare I call myself your courtier?) For though I sit at your father's right hand as a guest at his table, it is you to whom I find myself attending with sweets and praise and a willing ear for your serious recollection of the day's adventures. It is an instant kinship between us, one that puzzles and delights me by turn. You kiss me before you are swept off for your bath, and when your mother returns you, it is into my arms that you are delivered. She is much impressed with me, Salome, and lays you down as though she believes my favour to be a blessing upon her only child.

And I would bless you, if I could. You are a welcome distraction after a day of your father's unflagging rhetoric. Aurelius is a brilliant man and irreplaceable contact, and he knows both these things all too well. You sweetly chatter on about your toys and lessons in precocious phrases gleaned from your elders, under the indulgent eyes of your father and I. Aurelius smiles at you with a certain pride that, up until now, I have only seen him exhibit in the wake of a successful experiment. Which, to him, I suppose you might well be.

You preen under all this attention, smiling toothily, your skin pink as a piglet's from a vigorous scrubbing. You are dwarfed by your nightshirt; it falls nearly to your feet, the sleeves sliding down over your hands. It is, like your dinner robes, pristine, and this is in charming contrast to the scrape I glimpse on your bare knee as you clamber higher into my lap.

I hold you tight, and your warmth conjures the ghosts of other little children, grown or dead or scattered on the four winds. In your copper-penny voice and guileless eyes, I find those little nieces and nephews whom I once held just like this. Even your scent of gentle soap and clean sweat reminds me. You wiggle as they once did when I tickle your plump little belly. You comb my beard between tiny, clever fingers while I sing you a song that my mother once sang to me.

Such a darling. You curl into my embrace like a seedling turning towards the sun, half asleep and still protesting that it cannot be bedtime just yet, not just yet, as you twine your small body around me.

Unashamed, I shall name you in this memory—and myself, shameless. For as you throw me such coy looks and press earnest, sticky kisses into the crook of my neck, I cannot help but fondly think: oh, what a danger this one will be when he's old enough for love. I imagine you a man in your prime with your father's wits and your mother's charms, casting sly smiles over your shoulder as suitors fall to their knees.

(It's not too late to have one of your own, Professor—Albus, Salome says, and she smiles with the sadness of mothers.)

I demur, and she laughs, and you laugh without knowing why, and it is not long after this that your father tires of our display. He invites me to take a brandy with him in his study while we discuss his research further. You are handed, sulking, back to your mother, and I slip a soft toffee into your palm before your father leads me away. He leaves you without a backwards glance.

And so, perhaps, not then. Perhaps we two were innocent then, and your father as well.

But it could not have been long after. You are six years old when I next catch sight of you on a bright summer's day in Diagon Alley. You are thin as a lathe and smart as a whip, reading aloud the shopping list as your family makes the rounds of the apothecary.

"Hello there, young Master Snape. Do you remember me?"

A quick shake of the head. Your small hands twist in the front of your pale blue robes.

"Of course you do, Severus," your mother insists, pushing you towards me. "Give Professor Dumbledore a kiss."

I crouch down, prepared for a sticky smack, but your lips are dry and shy. Your breath stutters in quick little puffs against my cheek, and when you draw back, frowning, I think for a moment that you mean to dart behind your mother's skirts. But instead you reach towards me, and your fingers stroke my beard tentatively, as though it is a strange beast that may yet prove to bite.

You smile, baring a gap where a bicuspid should be.

"I remember," you say softly and lean forward to kiss me once more.

I laugh aloud with delight, ready to sweep you into my arms, but a sudden shadow falls over us both, and I pause. I look up to find that your father has joined us.

"Albus," he says, smiling politely. But it is you to whom he looks.

His great white spider of a hand comes to rest upon your shoulder, gently drawing you back out of my reach. His thumb strokes the tender nape of your neck. It strikes me as a proprietary gesture, and I find myself shivering, though the shop is quite warm.

You look away, frowning, and will say no more.

And I shall think, in years to come, of all that I might have saved that day had I been quicker to see. So sweet a smile, and your embrace, and a kiss, freely given.

Should I have killed him then, Severus?****

 

**2.**

I call a compromise as best I can:

We shall say that there are two Severus Snapes.

Believe me, Severus, this is a far kinder sentiment than that of regret, for if I open those doors for you, there are a thousand others who would scurry in at your heels and overwhelm your claims. That way lies madness.

And so, let us instead say that there is one Severus and then there is another. (Severuses and Severi, perhaps, in more fanciful moods than this.)

The first Severus is twenty-nine years old as of last July. He stands 177 centimetres in height, though most might credit him with more. He has black eyes, like closed shutters, and his hair falls nearly to his shoulders, untended and often unwashed. He does not like for his body to be admired, though he moves like raw silk in his voluminous robes. He smokes cigarette after cigarette in the shadow of a copse of oaks at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, holding each dog-end cupped in nervous, nicotine-stained hands. He does not like to be touched.

The other Severus...died as a child.

I see him, this other, from time to time. Just over your shoulder and behind your eyes. It is me he haunts, not you. You seem unaware that he exists at all.

We go for a Sunday stroll, you and I, and slowly circle around the lake. It is the first real day of winter, and our footsteps make a satisfying crunch in the scant snowfall. We walk arm in arm, and though I am in no danger of slipping, I quite enjoy the warmth of you at my side.

You begin to grumble, quietly at first and then progressively louder: your third year Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw class have backed up the drains twice in the last week and caused several small explosions. As you speak, your cheeks flush beyond the chill, pink and then scarlet. I hide my smile. You are without a doubt the most choleric man that I have ever known, endlessly simmering away just beneath the surface, awaiting only the slightest provocation to boil over into a scalding rage. It is harmless enough, though—it is your silent contemplation that is to be the more feared—and I've wondered at times (only wondered, mind you) at just what form such passion might take if channelled elsewhere...

...ah, but in any case, I make the appropriate noises of sympathy, and the lines across your brow begin to smooth themselves. Your railing lessens to a mere mumble once more, and you seem poised to change the subject when you pause. Your arm tightens around mine. We halt in our tracks.

We stand in silence halfway around the lake, near the greenbelt that frames the gate to Hogsmeade. Your breath is steaming in the air, and a curiously intent expression has overtaken your mundane displeasure. I hold my breath as I follow your gaze into the trees, trying to catch sight of just what has captured your attention, but my eyes are not nearly as sharp as yours. I reach for my wand.

You make an abrupt motion with your free hand, putting a stop to my question before it can leave my tongue.

With the same hand, you slowly point to a space between the trees. I peer into the shadowy thicket and, after a moment, see what I have missed. It is a lone unicorn mare, delicately picking her way across the frozen ground. She moves silently, seemingly unaware of our presence and leaving not even a rustle of pine needles in her wake.

We stand there, still arm in arm, watching until she disappears into the denser part of the wood. Then you softly sigh, and when I turn to look at you, I see the ghost of that long-dead boy smiling a very faint and wondering smile.

He is gone by the time we return to the castle, when you remove your arm from mine and pull off the mittens I've made you wear. And yet I am certain that he will return—for a minute, or an hour, or a day even—when you pass an entire holiday before the staffroom fire with a book in your lap, perhaps. I'll watch then as you make faces while you read, unconsciously mimicking the characters' expressions. On days such as those, you'll accept a cup of chocolate with a gracious quirk of a smile and sip it distractedly until a moustache of milk clings to your upper lip.

On days such as those, your hand might brush against mine for no reason at all, and that ghostly presence makes your mouth a thing of beauty. ****

 

**3.**

"Salome Snape, née Bones, died suddenly in her home at the age of 41. She is survived by her husband and son."

I discover your mother's obituary (in smallest type, on the back page of the Prophet) two months before you arrive at Hogwarts. Later inquiries on my part yield an overdose of sleeping draught. A tragic accident. Unable to attend the services, I owl a consolatory letter to your father.

To my shame, this is the first I've thought of you in over a year, since the last I had time to consult with your father on a pet project. Such sweet pity I feel for you, my brave young soldier, bereaved at so tender an age. You have no close relations to comfort you in these times, and your father—while arguably a genius—has always struck me as rather forgetful when it comes to practical matters. In recent years, I have come to suspect him of being overly fond of his drink.

It is a blessing, I think, that you shall soon be under Hogwarts' care.

On the day of the Sorting, I search for your face and a few others amongst the crowd, but one small dark-haired child is difficult to distinguish from another in the huddled line. Even when your name is called, it takes me a moment to believe that it is indeed you.

It must be the grief, I think to myself—yours and your family's. You are a sad sight, your robes second-hand and ill-fitting and your left sleeve cinched by a thick black mourning ribbon. You are in need of a haircut, and dark shadows circle your eyes.

And yet I recognise the phantom smile that crosses your face when the hat soundly declares, "Slytherin!"

It takes me somewhat aback. Your mother, if I recall correctly, was in Ravenclaw. Your father, in Gryffindor.

I send for you two days later when a narrow gap opens in my schedule just wide enough to admit one small boy. You seem happy to see me again (your eyes are veiled, but only thinly so) and this pleases me. You've grown coltish in the healthy, long-limbed way that I have always found appealing in boys. You gratefully and gracefully take a seat across the desk from me, appearing—the word comes clearly to me—_relieved_. The crowds and corridors of Hogwarts must seem a frightening place to a home-raised child such as yourself.

"Let's see if we can't find a treat for you," I say, rummaging about the desk drawers until I find a dish of boiled sweets.

I beckon you around the desk to choose a candy, and you shyly come. Up close, I find your scent slightly sour, the curdled-milk smell of nervous sweat. Your hand hovers over the dish, and you glance back at me once before hesitantly plucking a cherry-red chew.

And here...here is where my memory lies to me. Consider: there was once a case tried before the Wizengamot in which a man was accused of murdering his neighbour, who had drowned in the river dividing their properties. The accused claimed innocence, for he'd had no hand in putting the man in the water. (But, the council argued, you stood and watched him die.) The accused protested: He never called for help. (Ah, said the council, but you saw him struggle.)

I recall it thusly. I put my hand to your back. You startle. "I was very sorry to hear about your mother," I say. A tear spills onto your cheek.

This is a falsehood. One that I believed for years, but a falsehood nonetheless.

The pensieve reveals hidden truth: the first tears come as you stare down at the sweet nestled in your palm. You close your fist around it, and the cellophane wrapper makes a crinkling sound. You are already trembling when I touch you. "I was very sorry to hear about your mother." The tears have already reached your chin.

I pull you into my lap without a second thought, unable to bear the sight of you so manfully struggling not to weep.

(Hush, dear boy, it's all right.)

You are like a stone statue to hold, cold to the touch and stiff. Yet you allow me to wrap my arms around you and gently rock you back and forth as you wrestle with ugly, awkward sniffles. I rub your cheek, your chest, and your belly. You clumsily stroke my hands and legs in turn, which I allow until your innocent, trembling touch begins to venture too high along my thighs. I catch your hands in mine and hold them tight as you begin to sob in earnest.

I hold you for nearly an hour until your tears have dried, leaving only a pinkness around your eyes. You are nearly asleep when I walk you back to your dormitory. I promise myself that I will look in on you soon, but time slips away and it is the winter holidays before I know it. I invite your head of house for tea and ask about you in a roundabout way. She has glowing praise for the most part—you have won your house fifty points for classroom knowledge—but a recent incident has concerned her. You wet the bed twice in the week leading up to the holiday. The story has circulated, and your tears at the resultant teasing have earned you an unpleasant nickname.

I promise Professor Phial that I will speak to you when you return, though I hope the time home will calm you. Children forget things so easily. Perhaps this whole matter will have blown over by the new year. I pencil in an appointment to see you, but somewhere along the way it is erased and never rewritten. There are so many students who require close watching this year. The Potter heir and a Black together in Gryffindor, and let's not forget young Mr. Lupin and his condition....

The accused protested: he never called for help. (Ah, said the council, but you saw him struggle.)

That man was found guilty. ****

 

**4.**

"_Legilimens_."

And when it finally comes, on a wickedly cold night in November, it all somehow seems...inevitable.

Or perhaps that is only how I recall it. There is truth and then there is truth, and our minds often tell us pretty stories to justify our actions, grasping to find significance because the thought of there being none would be a horror too vast to comprehend. We dare to think we've glimpsed some larger picture because the things we've done have surely shifted the world upon its axis.

Our own worlds, at the very least....

But I maintain that even the most callous observer would find that by all rights, that night should have brought death upon one of the players in our drama. You or James. Remus, had you died; they would have put him down as though he were no more than a stray cur. Sirius, had you laid hands on him before I did.

Is it too much to believe that I merely shifted the sword dangling above our heads? Perhaps someday time will tell.

In any case, I know nothing of this so early in the night when I sit down at your side and take your mind with dream-like numbness. Yes, I acknowledge to myself, I almost believe it to be a dream—for how likely is it that I have just been dragged bodily from my bed by a seething Poppy Pomfrey? And do I honestly have young Sirius Black locked inside my office, fidgeting and pacing and, I dearly hope, wetting himself with fear?

You are sleeping, but barely. Your eyes are still and dreamless as I ease my way into your thoughts. They are hazy and scattered, with momentary flashes of urgency within them like the crackling of lightning between gathering storm clouds. You are fighting your sedation but failing. Poppy has dosed you well. There are deep scratches along your forearms. (Good Lord, Albus, I thought he'd been...) There is still flesh beneath your fingernails.

(Albus, I found traces of saliva on him—he got that close.)

It is, for a moment, a struggle to keep my thoughts from bleeding into yours.

(...only meant to scare him, sir.)

You flinch. Your fear tastes sharp and acrid.

This is a violation. You are in no position to give consent. Under the influence of the Calming Draught, your mind spreads limply open at my entrance, lewdly baring your memories for the taking. But I need to know. Before any action is taken this night and in the cold light of day that will follow, I need to know where the truth lies in the muddled middle ground of James's solemnity and Sirius's sullen denials.

Their stories are a jumble: you knew, you didn't know. Sirius knew, James didn't. Peter did, Peter didn't. They only agree upon one thing: Remus knew nothing.

This night is a cohesive mass at the forefront of your mind, dark and alive like a malignant tumour. It is almost too easy to tear it from you. You cry out so softly in your sleep—and I think to myself, dazedly, that you are still a lovely boy behind your sour ways and ill-care for your looks. Your face fits like a mask upon my own as I watch the evening unfold through your eyes.

(We'll meet after lights out...you remember how to get in, Peter? Just tap the knot with your wand.)

...oh, you do not even suspect, do you, so confident that you've gained the upper hand. There are dreams tied to this moment, hopes and wishes and morbid fantasies. It isn't pleasant, what you planned to do to them when you caught them unawares. Away from the castle, under cover of night.

It gives me pause for a moment, the intensity of your hatred for them. But then I remember what Sirius had in store for you.

Your memory holds the glimmer of intuition you felt as you neared the Whomping Willow.

(Wait)

But our palms are slick as we grip our wand, and the close-pressed walls of the dusty tunnel make us shiver. That whisper of foreknowledge is a scream now, but we cannot hear it over the pounding of our heartbeat, and the two sudden noises—

—behind us, the clatter of running feet—

(Snape—Stop!)

—and ahead: oh dear god, it moves so fast!

It makes a sound...a strange perverse grunt that means hunger, and the sudden wretched heat of its body...we cannot breathe and we cannot move. We cannot even scream.

(A confused thought: Father?)

And before those panicked hands grab us from behind, we feel the foetid breath against our face and the beast steps into the light.

(Snape—for fuck's sake, run!)

And I see the creature's face as you see it.

(Father? Shh...not a sound, Severus.)

I know it not at the time, but I will never forget the pitch of your whimper when I lay my trembling hand to your brow. How I want to withdraw. How I wish to un-see all that I have seen.

I want to imagine that I'm dreaming.

But I cannot, and it does not take long after that. You hide well—oh, how you've learned to hide it well—but only from those who do not know where such things are buried. The dusty back corners of your mind are the first places to be bared to light. And what I find there shall never pass my lips until the day that you entreat it.

Suffice to say, you know much of hungry monsters in the dark. Werewolves do not smell of whisky.

From there (inevitable) my anger with Sirius is suddenly no more than the buzzing of a gnat. I think: foolish boy. Foolish, prideful, thoughtless boy. But a boy nonetheless in the face of other evils. To expel young Sirius would be to have him wearing the Dark Mark within the year. I think: let him stay with James—yes, our Mr. Potter—who has proven himself a Gryffindor to the heart tonight. Let Sirius wait inside my office for just a little longer.

In the years to come, I will not even recall just when I left your side. But here it is.

Your father's house has changed little in the years since my last visit. Small things, your mother's touches fading away. The shrubbery around the gate is overgrown, the little window-box herb garden gone to weeds. I recall that there once was a gay little wreath nailed to the front door. No more.

Your father answers the door on the fifth ring, in his dressing gown, fumbling with his spectacles and wand. His eyes are bleary, his hair bedraggled. And I think: he _sleeps_.

"Aurelius," I say, my eyes fixed to his graceless, clumsy hands as I step over the threshold. "I believe we need to have a word, you and I."

I cast a silencing charm before closing the door behind us.

It is raining when I return to the castle. You are lost to the world, half-awake and half elsewhere. I sit myself down at the edge of the bed, noticing only dimly that I am dripping cold rainwater onto the sheets. I touch your face with numb hands, stroking your lips, your cheek, your brow. I am cold, and the inside of your mind is warm and secret and safe.

There is one memory...not the first time, but not so long thereafter. You are seven, perhaps. Your mother was gone to visit her sister, and it is only the two of you in the house. You and your father. For the first time, he has no need for you to be quiet.

I walk inside that memory, my boots echoing on a familiar floor. His footsteps have not yet sounded on the staircase. You are asleep, burrowed deeply beneath the blankets, breathing softly. You are so small.

I pluck you from that bed and shiver as the memory shifts around me, reshaping itself to my will. I carry you to the rocking chair in the corner of your nursery. The moonlight illuminates your young face, so different and yet so very much the same as the young man you will grow to be. I hold you and rock you until I can feel your warmth bleeding into me.

You will suspect nothing. It was too little, too late.

But he was sorry, Severus. I wish I could tell you that.

Before he died, I made certain that he wept for what he did to you. ****

 

**5.**

The rest of the story is more yours than mine. You fell under the care of your cousins, the Malfoys. There, I thought, you would be safe, away from your father and away from me as well.

So the road to Hell is paved, though you have since proven to me that it is a road that can be travelled both ways.

We sit together, you and I and a favourite ghost of my acquaintance, before the fire on a bitter winter's night. You are sprawled out in the armchair that, though it resides in my study, remains yours and yours alone. You are reading a great brick of a book, and from time to time you give a snort of laughter that means I'm meant to ask you what's so funny. The firelight suits you—thaws you, I might say—and the drink has brought a flush to your cheeks that puts me in mind of things it should not.

But it brings a smile. Such is life.

"More wine, Severus?"

You glance away from your page for a moment only, an instant scant enough to allow the quirk of an eyebrow. You reach out blindly, and your hand brushes against my own.

You pause. Your skin is very warm, and I cannot be certain which one of us sighs so contentedly at the contact. Then—I dare not speak—you give my hand a gentle squeeze before taking the glass from me.

"Thank you, Professor." You take a delicate sip.

My eyes linger upon you as you return to your reading, a drop of red wine clinging, trembling, to the cusp of your lower lip. And as I watch, nearly breathless, I cannot help but fondly think: Oh...what a danger this one will be when he's old enough for love.


End file.
